Despite its undeniable status as the best football (soccer, for us Americans) league in the world, the quality of officiating in the English Premier League has come under fire many times in the last few years. Fans have always and will always continue to point fingers and claim the referees are making deliberately biased decisions against their team. Still, the inconsistencies and lack of transparency we have seen recently go beyond that. For fans, viewers, and players to have the best possible experience, the refereeing in the English Premier League must improve.

My understanding of the Laws of the Game is at a decent level, as I am a referee who has worked in middle school, high school and club games. I feel I have enough knowledge to speak about this issue. I am in no way saying I can do a better job than the referees of the highest professional caliber who make incredible salaries and have trained for their job for many years, if not decades (even if it sometimes looks pretty easy). However, commenting on their decisions after the fact is something I am qualified to do.

I have been an avid fan of the Premier League team Arsenal since 2017 and have stuck with them through abysmal back-to-back 8th-place finishes and their dreadful quality of play during the COVID-19 lockdown. I celebrated their FA Cup triumph in 2020 and the exhilarating title races of the last two seasons. Finally, things are looking up! However, a pleasant Saturday morning of watching my team is often plagued with shocking decisions from the referees.

Refereeing decisions can have the biggest impact on the season as a whole. In the 2023-24 season, for example, the league was decided by just two points (where three are awarded per win and one per draw). One single choice to send off a player (award a red card) or just one questionable usage of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology can change everything. In just the first seven games of the 2024-25 season, we have observed an unforeseen level of mediocrity and seeming personal bias, particularly against Arsenal.

For example, in Arsenal’s match against Brighton and Hove Albion on Aug. 31, Declan Rice was controversially shown a second yellow card and was sent off. In this situation, a viewer could have predicted that a card would be handed out to the Brighton player for “violent conduct,” when he shoved Rice off the ball and then appeared to kick his shin, but this was not the case at all. Rice’s infraction: nudging the ball slightly and supposedly preventing a free kick from being taken by the opposing player. However, THE BALL WAS STILL MOVING, meaning that the free kick should not have been allowed to be taken in the first place. Amazingly, one of Brighton’s players, Joao Pedro, committed a nearly identical infraction in the first half of the same match and received no card. Even Arsenal’s coach, Mikel Arteta, who generally remains apolitical, was “amazed” by this outcome, complaining about the lack of consistency.

Arsenal is certainly not the only team on the receiving end of refereeing misjudgments. In Manchester United’s game against London side Tottenham Hotspur on Sept. 29, Bruno Fernandes was adjudicated to have committed an egregious enough offense to warrant a direct red card, leaving his team with 10 men. This hindered their capabilities as a team, and they went on to lose resoundingly 3-0 amidst their generally abysmal start to the season. Notably, though, the red card decision was reversed days after the game. By granting Manchester United’s appeal, the governing body of referees admitted their fault — but the damage had already been done. This again points to how referees, who should be at the highest possible level, struggle to make correct decisions, harming players, teams and fans.

Initially touted as revolutionary, VAR technology was brought to the Premier League in 2019. The Premier League realized that “match officials can make mistakes, and those mistakes can have an impact on the outcome of a match,” and thought this would be a final fix to the longstanding problem. Even with VAR in place though, fair decisions still cannot seem to be made consistently and regularly. Over the course of the previous season, 29 mistakes were made with the use of the new technology by referees who worked at least 10 games each, according to a recent article on the GiveMeSport website and blog.

Perfection is almost never a realistic goal, but a higher level of professionalism and consistency must be maintained among referees in the Premier League. The same rules should apply to all teams and players, and Professional Game Match Officials Limited must work to ensure their referees are up to the elite standard required at such a high-caliber league. This could involve ensuring that officials aren’t assigned to teams they support, increased training and more accountability (for example, post-game interviews for the referees, like the players and managers).

The only other explanation is that maybe I’m just a biased fan…